by David Reames
Now that the crops had been harvested and the fields laid barren, Peachtree Estates stood like some kind of lunatic lunar outpost. The mobile home community lay alongside Dixie—a two-lane stretch of highway that sliced through sorghum or alfalfa fields for dozens of miles around. The only signs of civilization were Peachtree, where I lived, and The Royal Meadows, a private golf resort that lay a couple miles west. And of course the Circle K gas station at the entrance to Peachtree, which was where Big Scott was supposed to pick me up.
The rusted screen door banged shut behind me and the twilight air was just coming onto me, putting her warm hands up my thighs and down my back as my Chucks rapped off of the asphalt along the cracked, pocked street past the sagging, dingy boxes that comprised the hinterlands I called home.
You pronounce that, “trailer park trash.”
Big Scott and I both worked at the Meadow. Once the greens closed for the night, employees usually squeezed in a free half-round. It was pretty much the only entertainment to be had around here.
I closed my eyes and inhaled the light breeze coming in from the fields—honeysuckle and phlox. Across the highway was an overgrown, abandoned lot. There was a copse of ancient, twisted trees in that lot. Those bent, old trees had always jagged with the lush green of the fields beyond—just wrong, somehow.
Those old trees had always looked like secrets to me.
I sat down on the curb alongside the convenience store.
I lit a smoke and pushed a jet of blue smoke out of my lungs into the departing day. The thick cloud hung in the air like a ghost. I hugged my knees and waited.
I was halfway through my smoke when I noticed this dude across the highway just standing there with one foot in the untended and riotous grass of the abandoned lot and the other on the shoulder of Dixie. I could’ve sworn the guy hadn’t been there a moment ago.
He was dressed real nice. Tan chinos with a crisp, deadly-looking crease down the front and a white button-down that was blinding even in the early dusk. He must’ve been drunk or stoned, because he was gawping at the coming twilight like the village idiot.
This guy definitely looked like a member of the Meadow, especially acting all drunk like that.
You pronounce that, “one-percenter.”
He was staring at me.
I flashed a sardonic smile and waved. I was in too good a mood. Nothing could bring me down tonight.
Just then a golf cart squealed into the Circle K’s parking lot at breakneck speed. Big Scott was behind the wheel and really making that cart walk and talk. He slammed on the brakes right in front of me.
“Goddamn,” I exclaimed, “you almost killed me, you mong.”
“If you loan me five bucks, I’ll buy you a pack of smokes,” he answered.
I jumped into the cart.
“No need,” I said.
“We’re not coming back, my dude. I mean, I’m going to get fired for sure for A, nicking a cart and Two: driving said cart on the highway. This is not a street legal mode of transport, Chico,” he said.
“’Nicking?’ You’ve been watching Downton Abbey, again.”
“It makes me sound like a gentleman.”
“It makes you sound like an asshole,” I said, and passed him a cigarette.
“Don’t be negative, Chico,” he said.
“You do see that ‘don’t be negative’ is inherently negative language?”
“So nothing from the K, then?”
“You should just say, ‘be positive.’”
“I am now driving away from the inconvenience store, Chico.”
“I have provisions,” I said, and produced a tiny Sucrets tin, empty but for two small white pills I had liberated from my Nana’s medicine cabinet when I visited her last week. I passed one to Big Scott.
“Chico! Is this what I think it is?”
“One for you and one for me.”
We popped the pills and swallowed them with bourbon.
“Now, that’s what I call a Hillbilly Dilly,” he said.
You pronounce that, “Dilaudid, 8 milligrams.”
“Oh, stick by me Chico. I’ll stick by you,” Big Scott sang, butchering the old reggae tune by Holt like he always did.
“I’ll stick by you, mon,” I sang back like I always did.
Big Scott stomped on the accelerator and we zoomed around in a wide arch, headed for the Meadow. I looked over my shoulder. The abandoned lot was empty, the stranger was gone.
A quarter of an hour later we were rolling through the front nine holes of The Meadow Golf resort. The shadows were just starting to form and the hydromorphone was starting to take its hold of me. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I fired up a blunt and passed it to Big Scott who dragged on it and coughed.
“Fucking Mexican dirt weed,” he said between hacks.
I ignored this. I felt good. You can’t help but just feel really good on days like that, with the evening coming on and the air clean, carrying rumors of autumn, but only rumors. Anything could happen.
“Soon as I get on my uncle’s crew, I’ll be making the big bucks and it’ll be no more bunk weed for us, Chico,” he said.
“You’ve been saying that for two years now,” I said.
“He was supposed to retire two years ago. You know how it works. He has to retire, then there’s an opening for me at the bottom. Like dominoes—it’s a chain reaction. The dude is old as grit. Any day now.”
“Here’s to ‘any day now,’” I said, taking a belt of bourbon.
“Fucking boomers,” he said, as he drank from the bottle, “I read online that they’re the healthiest generation so far. Less diabetes, less incipient heart disease. Statistics, dude. You know what that means—they hang onto the real plush jobs years after they should’ve retired. Y’know, by the time he was our age, he already owned a house and a boat. I just want a little slice of that sweet American Dream,” he said and exhaled a plume of smoke through his nose to punctuate his sarcasm.
“The American Dream?” I scoffed, “look, show me a boomer and I’ll show you a dude who had it better than his parents and his kids. Hell, even the millennials are middle-aged, now.”
“And we’re behind the millennials. Where does that leave us, Chico?” he asked.
I took a hit.
“Generation Z,” I said, “We’re post-millennial.”
“Post-bullshit, if you ask me.”
You pronounce that, “Zoomer.”
“Oh, stick by me, Chico, I’ll stick by you,” he sang, and took a heroic hit off the blunt.
“I’ll stick by you,” I sang back.
We passed the now closed concession cabana—the de facto divider of the first nine holes from the back nine—pulled up on the green and de-carted. I stretched, took a deep breath and exhaled, grabbed my driver, and as I stepped up to the ball, Big Scott asked if I wanted to make it interesting, say twenty bucks. I was a good golfer, but Big Scott used to play for real in high school. Might even have had a chance to go pro before his girlfriend got knocked up. By some other guy. Kind of took the piss out of Big Scott just long enough to miss his window I guess. But the evening was heavy. It was like, gravid, in some ineffable way.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. Maybe I would have some heat tonight and could always use the extra Jackson.
“Can I get some of that action?” came a voice from behind us.
We both turned and damned if it wasn’t that geek that had been standing off Dixie and the abandoned lot. Only now he didn’t look cracktastic at all. Now he looked completely sane with his expensive bag slung over his shoulder, charcoal-black hair neatly combed with a pencil-straight part and a broad smile stretched over his shaved chin. He looked exactly like any other dipshit member of this club—rich with money, destitute of time, and utterly convinced that a brand new S Class in the club parking lot was proof that they were indeed masters of the links as certainly as they were titans of industry.
Despite this, my mind returned to the image of this same guy standing with one foot on the road and one on a forgotten patch of land gawping at the coming night, looking absolutely mad. I did not want to play a round of low-stakes golf with him. In fact, I wasn’t sure why, but I wanted to drop my club and run.
“It’s nine hole and twenty bucks gets you in,” said Big Scott. I could see the resentment in his eyes. I had always known that where I regarded guys like this with some species of genuine pity, Big Scott had a secret envy of them in his heart, and his envy tended toward bitterness.
I differed with him on this point. Fundamentally, I consoled myself with the notion that, wage slave though I was, I valued my minutes in this world more than grinding them away for shiny cars and huge mortgages.
You pronounce that, “philosophy major.”
“Done,” replied the stranger, smiling. He produced a crisp twenty-dollar bill.
“Alright, light is a-wastin’,” said Big Scott.
I could hear the animus in his tone. He really wanted to ram it to this bougie douchebag. Scott wanted to show him that, Mercedes or no, he was master of this particular back nine. His face was impassive, but I could feel the intensity come off him in waves. The stranger, still smiling, folded the twenty and made it disappear, aping a street magician’s flourish. Neat trick. Again, I had the impulse to put my heels to the wind and not look back. Instead, I took a swallow of bourbon and set up my shot.
The stroke was solid and my ball landed neatly in the green not far from the hole. Big Scott’s ball landed closer and the stranger’s even closer. The game was on.
As we walked down to the flag, I noticed that the stranger smelled. I mean, he stank something awful. It was not B.O. and it wasn’t dog shit on his shoe. It was a low, corrupt stench. A nonsensical but persistent thought played like a tattoo through my head: pestilence. That is what pestilence smells like.
Big Scott and I were both downwind and I knew that if I smelled the guy, Big Scott could, too. But his face revealed nothing.
We played golf and I did indeed have heat. Heat like I had never had before. I was, in fact, playing the game of my life. But as well as I was playing, Big Scott was playing even better. And the stranger was keeping up, shot for shot.
You pronounce that, “dead heat.”
I should have been thrilled at the taut, heated game afoot and the inspired playing on all parts but I was not. I was terrified.
Because the stranger was changing.
With each hole we knocked down, with the fading light, the guy was transforming. And his stink was so strong I actually gagged, bitter alcohol burping into my mouth. I swallowed it back down.
By the third hole, he had removed his shirt, revealing an extremely hairy chest. I mean he was covered in it, like a coat. And his hands seemed to be too long, the fingers lengthening and tapering into points. Big Scott was scarcely looking at the stranger at all; seemed not to notice. He was engrossed in his game. He was going to beat this asshole, by God.
By the fourth hole, I noticed the guy’s teeth had drawn down into evil little points and that his eyes had grown. They were like swamp lamps in the failing sun.
By the fifth hole, still tied shot for shot, he had kicked off his cost-the-same-as-a-month’s-rent golf brogues and his feet were… well, they were hooves.
By the sixth hole he had removed his pants, disclosing an enormous swinging penis. It was flopping down between his knees. The pendulous member had a bulbous, forked tip.
At the seventh hole Big Scott broke the tie with an amazing shot. Scott pumped his fist into the air with rapture.
“Yes! Did you see that fuckin’ shit, bro?” Big Scott was hoarsely shouting. I barely noticed because the stranger, whose legs were now bent the wrong way at the knees and covered in thick hair, was dancing from cloven hoof to cloven hoof. He seemed to be dancing in an ecstasy of rage. He held up one of his Woods in both hands and bit it in half, his wicked jaws flexing.
At the eighth hole, I lit a cigarette with trembling hands and gagged on the smoke. The warm hug of the Dilaudid I had taken was long, long gone, yet I managed to tie up with Big Scott again. His eyes were narrowed with determination.
The stranger now had huge horns curling from his brow down around his ears, like ram’s horns. The stranger took his shot and it was clean. It was a dead heat again. That was when we saw another Meadow’s employee way down at the foot of the hill. He was resetting a sprinkler or something. In an instant, the stranger bolted, charging down the hill straight for the unwitting employee, galloping on his two goat legs so fast it hurt my mind to witness it. I opened my mouth to call out a warning, to scream, anything. But the sound locked in my throat. The stranger tore the employee to pieces with manic enthusiasm.
I turned to Big Scott, who seemed not to have noticed at all and was setting his shot for the final hole.
“Scotty, my man…”
He looked up at that. I never called him “Scotty”.
I glanced at the grim scene below, “About that guy…”
At those words, the stranger jerked his head in my direction. His large, crocodile eyes flashed despite the gloom. He had heard me.
I glanced back at Scott, whose eyebrows were raised, waiting for me to finish.
I closed my mouth and shook my head, but I had looked into Big Scott’s eyes and saw something there.
I saw it plain as day, in his eyes.
“Oh, stick by me,” he sang and his voice cracked.
“I’ll stick by you,” I sang back, like I always did.
What I had seen in his eyes was this: my childhood friend had gone quite insane.
The stranger galloped back to us, his hooves tearing a line of deep divots in the shadow-blue grass behind him. He took his shot. One confident stroke and the ball landed not four feet from the ninth flag. It was a shot that set up an easy coup de grâce for even the lousiest putter, and the stranger was not lousy. Not at all.
I was covered in sweat and shivering with cold. Scott was nearly vibrating with intensity. He took his shot and I could see from here, even in the flagging light that it was brilliant. It was flying in a grand, true arch. Despite the horrors about us, that shot was a beautiful thing to behold.
Then the god damnedest thing…
It…
It hit a bird in flight.
There was a puff of white feathers and a warm bird corpse fell from the sky as Big Scott’s ball went into the rough.
I shit you not; swear to God; If I’m lying I’m dying.
Scott stared down the gloomy fairway in silent disbelief. His shoulders sagged. He looked sick. He looked defeated.
You pronounce that, “damned.”
The stranger was dancing and capering around from foot to foot, again.
No. Hoof to hoof. Hoof to hoof.
This time with a glee that made my blood run cold.
“I guess that’s some kind of birdie! Birdie! Birdie!” he giggled, spinning in circles, arms straight out at his sides, like Julie-fucking-Andrews in the fucking Sound-of-fucking-Music.
The stranger abruptly ceased his jig and looked at me with his huge, flinty, jaundiced eyes.
“Take your shot now.” His voice was low and eager. His breath was rancid.
Head down and with the dreadful resignation of a condemned man for the gallows, I walked over, teed up, and addressed my ball. The stranger was still giggling except the giggles sounded like puppies being drowned in a garbage bag.
I swung a golf club for the last time in my life. I did not even feel the club connect with the ball as I hit my first and last hole-in-one, ever.
The stranger howled in disappointment.
Big Scott suddenly broke into his own mad, laughing jig.
“That’s right, you fuck. You owe my bro here twenty. Pay up. Twenty bucks, bitch. And maybe next time you’ll remember you are not the master of these greens! Let it be a lesson! Let it be a lesson!” Big Scott was striding in a circle around the stranger and raving.
You pronounce that, “broken.”
The stranger’s huge hand darted out, catching Big Scott’s face. There followed Big Scott’s muffled scream and then a wet tearing sound as the stranger tore the meat from Scott’s head. A flick of his wrist and Scott’s face flopped onto the green like a rubber Halloween mask.
“Mine. It’s mine,” the stranger said to me. Not sure if he meant these greens or Scott’s face or my immortal soul. Absurdly, the stranger repeated his earlier back-alley magic, but in reverse because this time he conjured a crisp twenty-dollar bill seemingly out of thin air. He dropped the bill at my feet, took up Big Scott’s corpse, and galloped off into the trees. Scott’s face still lay on the grass that now looked black in the new night.
Much later, on the long, long walk home along the shoulder of Dixie—utterly, completely, despairingly sober, and the oily, hopeless smell of the highway—I would find that twenty folded neatly inside my Sucrets tin. I would not remember putting it there. And when I’d finally passed under the nicotine-yellow cast of the streetlamps in front of that abandoned lot across from the entrance of Peachtree Estates, I’d try not to look at the old trees that always looked like secrets to me. I’d try not to see movement in the deep shadows among those gnarled branches.
And I’d will myself not to hear the small voice in the shadows.
“Mine, mine.”
David Reames is a senior in the NYUSPS Creative Writing program. He is a professional artist who lives in Manhattan with his wife and rescue dog.
What time period would you most like to live in? I’ve always fantasized what it must have been like to be a painter in Florence, during the High Renaissance.
What job would you be horrible at? Professional hockey. I regret that I just don’t have the ankles for it.
What word or phrase do you most overuse? In my everyday speaking, I am guilty of abusing the word “literally” as an intensifier. It literally drives everyone around me crazy.